Jewish Marksman's Shooting Update

For those following my NRA High Power adventures, the past couple months have been boring on the surface, but big developments are hopefully brewing. My last two matches were roller coaster rides, both just barely squeaking by with Master scores. But I made a number of very significant changes (at least in my view) to my off hand and prone positions, and am starting to see the benefits of my experiments.

For standing off hand, I switched from using the magazine as a palm rest, and now hold the rifle more or less around the delta ring, with my thumb on the right side of the barrel and my fingers on the left. My left elbow rests on my rib cage instead of my hip. The position has proven much more stable. My scores don't show it, because I'm still tweaking the exact position of my elbow and my NPA (natural point of aim) is not stable yet. However, the rifle settles very well and on the scatt I am getting much longer holds in the 10 ring. The problem in matches has been that I get a little too aggressive and pull the trigger on any halfway decent stable sight picture. I definitely have the hold now where I can reject the shot, adjust my NPA and try again. In practice I am routinely getting 95-98 on the scatt. Soon things should come together in a match.

In prone, I finally figured out how to get the rifle out of my palm and more onto the fat of my thumb, which really lets me straighten my hand out more as well. This has really improved circulation in my support hand, so that now it doesn't fall asleep as quickly, sometimes going the whole 20 minutes with no circulation problems. My slow prone is good with this.

I'm dealing with a minor issue where my rapid prone zero moves down mid-string, I think I don't keep a consistent cheek weld shot-to-shot and am probably not seeing the sights right. So my first shot or two will be an X, and then the shots will form a knot at the bottom of the 9-ring. Either that, or I am not getting the same cheek weld after the reload. Either way, an easy problem to fix with a little practice and trying to be conscious of it.

So I made Master this year, but its looking like a few things need to be tweaked before I'll make High Master. I am hoping by April I'll have done it. I have 3 other rifles waiting for me to shoot (one being the Garand!), but I just can't bring myself to put down the AR-15 until I get that High Master card!